A people's tragedy

Predictably, the party leadership accused Trotsky of instigating a dangerous ‘platform’ which could lead to the creation of an illegal ‘faction’ in the party. Without responding to his political criticisms, the Politburo issued a vicious personal attack on Trotsky on 19 October. Trotsky was arrogant, considered himself above the day-to-day work of the party, and acted by the maxim ‘all or nothing’ (i.e. ‘Give me all or I’ll give you nothing’). Four days later Trotsky addressed a defiant rebuttal of the charges of ‘factionalism’ to the Plenum of the Central Committee. On 26 October he appeared at the Plenum itself.

Until recently it was thought that Trotsky had not attended this crucial meeting. Deutscher and Broué, his two main biographers, both have him absent with the flu. But he did attend and, indeed, put up such a powerful defence that Bazhanov, Stalin’s secretary, who was charged with transcribing Trotsky’s speech, buried the records of it in his personal files. They were found there in 1990. Trotsky’s speech was a passionate denial of the allegations of ‘Bonapartism’ which he claimed had been levelled against him. It was at this point that he raised the question of his Jewish roots. To prove that he lacked ambition Trotsky cited two occasions when he had turned down Lenin’s offer of high office — once in October 1917 (Commissar of the Interior) and once again in September 1922 (Deputy Chairman of Sovnarkom) — on the grounds that it would not be wise, given the problem of anti-Semitism, to have a Jew in such a high post. On the first occasion Lenin had dismissed this as ‘trivial’; but on the second ‘he was in agreement with me’.46 Trotsky’s implication was obvious: opposition to him in the party — and Lenin had acknowledged this — stemmed partly from the fact that he was a Jew. It was a tragic moment for Trotsky — not just as a politician but also as a man — that at this turning point in his life, standing condemned before the party, he should have to fall back on his Jewish roots. For a man who had never felt himself a Jew, it was a mark of how alone he now was.

Trotsky’s emotional appeal made little impression on the delegates — most of whom had been picked by Stalin. By 102 votes to two the Plenum passed a motion of censure against Trotsky for engaging in ‘factionalism’. Kamenev and Zinoviev pressed for Trotsky to be expelled from the party; but Stalin, always eager to appear as the voice of moderation, thought this was unwise and the motion was rejected.47 Stalin, in any case, had no need to hurry. Trotsky was finished as a major force and his expulsion from the party — which finally came in 1927 — could await its time. The one man capable of stopping Stalin had now been removed.

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The public had not been told that Lenin was dying. Right until the end the press continued to report that he was recovering from a grave illness — one from which any mortal man would have died. By inventing this ‘miracle recovery’ the regime sought to keep alive the cult of Lenin upon which it now increasingly depended for its own sense of legitimacy. The term ‘Leninism’ was used for the first time in 1923: the triumvirate sought to present themselves as its true defenders against Trotsky, the ‘anti-Leninist’. The same year saw work commence on the first edition of his collected works (the Leninskii sbornik), the holy scriptures of this orthodoxy, and the establishment of the Lenin Institute (formally opened in 1924), complete with an archive, a library and a museum of Leninania. There was a spate of hagiographies whose main aim was to create myths and legends — Lenin as a poor peasant, or a worker, Lenin as the lover of animals and children, Lenin as the tireless worker for the people’s happiness — which might help to make the regime more popular. It was also from this time that huge portraits of Lenin began to appear on the façades of public buildings — one Moscow park even had a ‘living portrait’ of him made up of bedding plants — while inside many factories and offices there were ‘Lenin Corners’ with approved photographs and artefacts to illustrate his achievements.48 As Lenin the man died, so Lenin the God was born. His private life was nationalized. It became a sacred institution to consecrate the Stalinist regime.

Lenin died on 21 January 1924. At 4 p.m. he had a massive stroke, fell into a deep coma and died shortly before 7 p.m. Apart from his family and attendant doctors, the only witness to his death was Bukharin. In 1937, pleading for his own life, he claimed that Lenin had ‘died in my arms’.49